"Let your fiction grow out of the land beneath your feet."
Willa Cather

"Whatever it is you do, the last impression is what people remember. Begin well, with attack and accuracy. Drive it through. But, whatever else, make the end the best. Know exactly what you are aiming for and finish with a bang.
Alma Gluck

"I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering."
Robert Frost

"Life can't ever really defeat a writer who is in love with writing, for life itself is a writer's lover until death--fascinating, cruel, lavis, warm, cold, treacherous, constart."
Edna Ferber

Me and My Shadow In the Summer Rain

By BEK-Strutton

Lazing away the day on the old porch swing, faithful Shadow at    my feet.

Her sad eyes look listlessly toward the mackerel sky as it    turns a dusty gray.

Within the garden hedgerow, hidden goldfinch twitter    anxiously, one flits out and back again.

Upon a gatepost a crow rests, wings open in still flight, beak    in silent calls.

A cabbage butterfly lights on a hollyhock's withered pink    blossom, its wings lazily working.

The faint familiar buzz of a bumblebee drifts up from the old    stump nearby.

Shadow's ears raise in anticipation to the quickly darkening    sky, something's in the air.

The electricity is tangible, my skin prickles and the hairs on    my arms rise.

Shadow feels it too, and looks to me for comfort as    thunderheads swiftly form.

Honeybees in the blue wisteria suddenly stop buzzing and a    distant blue-jay scolds.

Suddenly the air is gone, there is none, my nostrils flair to no    avail.

My skin glistens, Shadow comes close her head down, sad    hooded eyes looking skyward.

Alerted, she looks, from far away a barely heard rumble, then    another, louder than the first.

Blessed coolness, just a breath touches my warm brow, as    distant battles come closer.

Perched on his tiny white home, a bluebird sings, mate    anxiously watching from within.

Smell the sweet freshness on the rising breeze just a hint    then its gone.

Thunderbolts fall in rapid succession, the ground trembles    and Shadow hides behind my feet.

She gives no chase when a ruffled cardinal swoops in for cover    beside us.

A drop, then two, then billions of light catching prisms fall to    the earth.

Convulsive shivers take me by surprise as tiny goose flesh    dances about my neck.

The birds and bees are quiet, no butterflies are seen, Shadow    watches, eyes alert again.

Thunder rumbles overhead and again from whence it came,    then from a new domain.

The storm travels on where it may bring sweet, cool relief    from oppressive summer heat.

As any force of nature, it travels as it came; without regret,    determined, and unstoppable.

Flashes almost invisible now, rumble barely audible, plowing    rain, no longer fierce, Shadow sighs.

Then its gone, the sun peaks through, the birds sing, and only    cool air remains.

The grass and leaves, and a spider's web all sparkle in the    light, a fairyland.

Orange monarchs and yellow swallowtails flutter by, as a    viceroy pesters the pink clover.

The cabbage butterfly chasing its mate, while a ruby-throated    hummingbird invades the hollyhock.

Now the crow calls from high, a red-winged blackbird comes    hunting on the fly.

The cardinal's gone still the jay is scolding and bumblebees    sound mad as hornets.

Over the hedgerow a dozen wild canaries cavort as a blue-   winged dragonfly jets by.

As the gray sky turns azure blue, a faint protesting rumble    comes drifting through.

The stifling heat will soon come again, but for now, smell, feel,    breath, enjoy.

The bluebirds sing as Shadow sleeps. Go back

"Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during a moment."
Carl Sandburg

"A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds."
Percy Bysshe Shelley

"Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful fellings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity."
William Wordsworth

I was writing - learning and growing along with the children - until eventually I was writing fiction worthy of publication. It might have happened sooner had I had a room of my own and fewer children, but somehow I doubt it. For as I look back on what I have written, I can see that the very persons who have taken away my time and space are those who have given me something to say."
Katherine Paterson